A life sized sculpture of Elvis Presley projects towards visitors in the gallery on the first floor of the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, while on the ground floor, Queen Victoria presides over the East Wing.

One hundred and eight years elapsed between Francis Williamson’s beautifully detailed refined marble rendition of Her Majesty and Sean Read’s sculpture of Elvis, depicting him as bloated and anything but saintly. 

Fibreglass is a 20th Century material, not even created in the Victorian age. Imagine the Elvis figure in cool white marble. Marble wouldn’t have the energy, the immediacy and the sense of something new and exciting in popular culture yet is so fitting for a regal bust.

While the Elvis sculpture initially struck me as kitsch, the work does have an authenticity, by reminding us of the pathos of the “King’s”’later life. I wonder what Queen Victoria would have thought of the “King of Rock and Roll’.